Your Heart Like a Dam When It Breaks
by mosylu
Summary: She was supposed to believe that the princess needed a friend? Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, with her elaborate braided hairstyles and perfectly white outfits? Her soft, pampered face and hands, and her childhood in a palace with two adoring parents? Jyn thought it was perfectly clear she didn't need anything.


Because I want to think some more about these two interesting, prickly women and how they'd get on together (or not). Title from the Indigo Girls' "One Perfect World."

* * *

Jyn stalked down the hallway, a scowl on her face. "Go fetch the princess, Erso," she mocked under her breath. "It's on your way, Erso. No trouble, right, Erso?"

Sure, it was on her way back to quarters, but she was tired, and she had files upon files to go through before her meeting with Draven the next day, and wasn't that what commlinks were for? And just. Ugh. The _princess._

She didn't know why she bristled whenever she saw the princess, striding through the halls or surrounded by officers and pilots hanging on her every word. Maybe it was because everyone else fell all over themselves to adore her. Maybe because people seemed to think she should adore her too. More than adore her. Be her _friend._

"Because we're both women?" Jyn had snapped at Bodhi, and he'd ducked his head and mumbled something about that they'd both had it hard, and the only reason she hadn't reached across the table and dumped his caf in his lap was because it was Bodhi.

She'd considered it seriously, though.

Because really? She was supposed to believe that the princess needed a friend? Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, with her elaborate braided hairstyles and perfectly white outfits? Her soft, pampered face and hands, and her childhood in a palace with two adoring parents? Jyn thought it was perfectly clear she didn't need anything.

"I calculate a ninety-four percent chance that you and Princess Leia Organa would attempt to murder each other," K2-SO had mused once, when she was grumbling about Bodhi's crackpot friends idea to a patient Cassian.

"See," she'd said, and then, "What? Why would she want to murder me? I'm perfectly - um - " She struggled, and pretended not to see Cassian grinning to himself.

"On the other hand, I also calculate a ninety-six percent chance you would be very good friends," K2 said, and for a pair of optical sensors and no mouth, it was really amazing how baffled it could look. "I must be malfunctioning."

"No, I don't think you are," Cassian said, and when Jyn looked daggers at him, shrugged. "I'm not saying you have to," he said. "I would never tell you what to do."

"Ha."

"But I'm saying I could see it. In the right circumstances, you would get along like a house on fire." One of his sly grins quirked the corners of his mouth. "People running and screaming, the roof falling in - "

She hit him in the arm.

K2 must be malfunctioning, she thought now, sourly. They were nothing alike. The princess loved bossing people around, and being bossed around was the thing that Jyn hated most. It was tailor-made for disaster.

Jyn turned the corner into the cluster of offices, headed for the one the princess used. She didn't even have the decency to insist on a giant grand office. One of the cubbies like all the other generals and heads used, no, that was just fine!

She was just so wonderful and admirable, the orphaned princess who'd watched her planet blown to smithereens (by a weapon Jyn's own father had built, a squirmy little worm in her stomach reminded her) and then escaped the Death Star to bring its plans to the Rebel Alliance. Which plans the Rogue One crew had gotten in the first place, _by the way._

So brave! So strong! So stomach-turning.

The Princess's cubby was the only one with a light on. Jyn automatically paused at an angle where she could see in, but it would be hard for anyone inside to spot her with a casual glance.

The princess sat at her desk, but she wasn't looking at maps or battle plans or even one of Cassian's incredibly dull intelligence reports (Force love him, but the man just did better in person).

Instead, Leia was staring fixedly over her shoulder at the far wall, her face turned away from the small blue holo playing silently on the desk in front of her. Two people, dressed up fancy, talking animatedly.

What was it? A birthday greeting? A reminder to clean her room when she got back to the palace? Gossip about the neighbors?

Jyn had no idea, but when she saw the look on Leia's face - the twisted, pinched grimace - she knew who the people were.

All this time, she had been hearing about how the Princess had lost her entire planet. But like a punch in the stomach, she remembered that Leia's entire planet had included her mother and her father.

No, she hadn't been an eight-year-old hiding in the soggy weeds, watching her mother be shot and her father taken away. But she had been almost an adult, in the hands of the enemy, and she'd hadn't even gotten to see her mother one last time before everything was ripped away from her forever.

Jyn knew that face. She'd made that face, trying to hold in the tears, even when you were alone, because if they broke through, they would crumble you into debris and wash you away, scattered, with no chance of reassembling yourself.

She backed away, two steps, three, spy-quiet, until she could no longer peer in at Leia's private grief. Then she stood frozen, uncertain, in the middle of the corridor. Oh, _crinking, karking hell!_

She looked down at the can she carried under one arm - plain steel with a lid that popped on and off. It had come from the kitchens, and she'd intercepted it on its way to the recycler. She was taking it back to their quarters to serve as a catch-all. For a spy, Cassian picked up a great deal of flotsam and jetsam that he absolutely needed, no _really._ This way she could pop the lid on and shove the whole thing in her satchel if they needed to evacuate quickly.

She opened her arm and let it go.

It hit the ground with a crash and then a series of hollow booms as it bounced a few times, then a yang-yang-yang sound as the lid spun to a stop several feet away. "Oh, kriff!" she said as loudly as possible, going to her knees.

She took as long as reasonably possible to retrieve the jar and the lid and fit them back together before she looked up. Leia stood in the door of her office, peering down at her. "Sergeant Erso?"

Her expression was smooth and unreadable, her eyes not red at all.

Jyn saluted, sort of, from the floor. "Sorry, Your Highness. Slipped right out of my fingers." She got to her feet.

"Oh. Did it get dented?"

"No, it's fine, I just - " Just what? "Ah, General Draven wants you in the briefing room. He's been trying to raise you on your commlink. Must be broken, though."

"I turned it off. Just to - to concentrate."

"Right," Jyn said. "Well. Anyway. So that's what I came for."

"I'll comm him right now."

"How do you always remember everybody's name?" Jyn blurted. "Did they teach you that on - for being a princess?"

Leia looked up at her. For the first time, Jyn noticed she was actually a few inches taller than the other woman. That wasn't common, with other humans.

"Yes," she said. "But I'm actually not that good at it, not like - " Her face spasmed for a split second, almost too fast to see, then smoothed out again. "I'm just really good at acting like I remember everyone."

"But you always remember me," Jyn said. "You say my name. Every time."

"Of course I remember you," Leia said. "None of us would be here if it weren't for you."

Jyn felt her face go hot. "Or you," she pointed out, and then remembered Leia's face as she looked away from the holo of her parents.

Leia ducked her head, mumbling, "Yes, well," and let it trail off. "Thank you very much."

"I was coming this way already," Jyn said. "It was no problem to deliver a message."

"Of course," Leia said, smooth and princess-like, and Jyn couldn't shake the feeling that the thanks hadn't been for the message at all.

FINIS


End file.
